I’VE WRITTEN ALL OVER THIS IN HOPES YOU CAN READ IT by Nate Pritts

Send me some dispatches, some sultry spring grasses,
some water from the sky on the windshield
all in droppings. Tell me this burgeoning is a spring
from the future & the hopes that I’ve harbored
are structures fulfilled. These buildings can reach
way up to the sky. This sky full of rockets or other projectiles.
This some kind of booming. I’m sitting here
waiting & I know what comes next will come next
no matter what, that ready or not I’m not ready
for what today will turn into if I blink my eyes slow
& slumber through the tragedy. These words
that I’m saying are all part of my programming.
I’m a goddamn Romantic, a poet or a puppet.
I’ve got a voice of my own & maybe four others
to master. There’s a mournful cadence & a flustered
two step. There are bodies & there are bodies
& they’re crushing against us. Tell me what it looks like
in your sparkly tomorrowland. Are there people
or less people or masses pulsating? I’m living today
but aware of my past; I’m hoping people forget about
the cities I’ve burnt down accidentally. The towns
all abandoned & the villagers bereft. I’m scanning
the horizon for signs of something lovely. I’m scouting
green hillsides in search of some treasure. I’m loaded
& tired & I’ve been given permission. I’ve been told
I deserve it though my deserving is unintentional.
I’ve been dared to make sense of the illegible bluster
but the trick is I’ve walked down the aisle twice this life
already & I’m regretful & lonely. I’ve made nothing
but messes so let me stand still to see what runs right
into me wrongly. I’ve taken some notes on this paper
I’m sending, along with some hopes enveloped within it.
Write back & say what this scrawl means to you.